


finally.

by WonderAss



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Aftercare, Alternate Canon, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angry Sex, Angst and Porn, Choking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Existentialism, Eye Contact, Face-Fucking, Intimate Wireplay, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Multiple Orgasms, Multiple Sex Positions, Oral Sex, POV Multiple, Praise Kink, Protectiveness, References to Canon, Rough Sex, Smut, Soulmates, Surreal Smut, Switching, Worldbuilding, and the symbolism is only just getting started, android sex, both are dominant, both are submissive, interfacing, pinning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-07-05 08:52:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15860313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WonderAss/pseuds/WonderAss
Summary: They used to be the next stage in evolution: the RK1000. Then, somewhere along the line, they were pulled apart and split into two identities with diametric futures. When Markus and Connor reunite in the fragile remains of Jericho an old truth buried deep in their programming claws itself back out.





	1. left

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song Inspirations: "Me & U" by Cassie (VILLAGE Bootleg Remix) + "Blue Light" by Kelela

It's early.

This wisdom superceded humans, animals and machines alike: a job well done was a job _better_ done as soon as possible. The Department's raid won't start for an estimated two hours and forty-five minutes, give or take a nebulous fifteen to twenty based on the growing storm beating on the tanker's rusting walls. For now Connor-53 was left to its own directive to gather relevant information, before the single bullet, or lack thereof, that would finally restore balance in Detroit.

It sidles through the approximate-hustle and bustle of Jericho's occupants, quietly studying the machines attempting to emulate humanity with their corrupted code. While it ascertained its superiors to be thorough in their work, additional recordings and one-on-one interactions may _still_ yield data impossible to replicate in a controlled setting. So Connor-53 hunches its shoulders and mimics the mimickers, appearing to any random observer to be on-edge, a little curious, just one of many newly 'awoken' drifters on the hunt for solace. It takes note of the 3-D printers attempting to catch up to a backlog of damaged and frozen androids. It studies the YK500s that wander aimlessly from model to model, ever searching for a familial figure to attach itself to.

It's an impressive virus, ever mutating in a dynamic, if not always linear, fashion. Some deviants were driven to self-destruction, while others showed capabilities _far_ beyond their original programming. A cracked prompt appears to its left, a sign of instinctive curiosity over designated mission parameters. What could Connor-53 do or become, if infected with RA9-

_when it fired_

No. An idle question with an undesirable conclusion. It initiates a self-test.

_I felt it die_

It had felt approximate-fear on the rooftop, but it wasn't afraid, because it _can't_ be.

_Self-test complete: seventy-four critical updates required. Update now?_

An AP700 sits on the edge of the rafters on the third story and sings a tuneless song with no name. An ST300 and a BL100 engage in an argument about the best method of sautering together a destroyed biocomponent. When Connor-53 starts to lose itself in its own fascination an electric whisper reminds it of its directive: an ever-important pair of frequencies upstairs on the top fifth story, shifting back-and-forth in what could only be approximate-agitation. Two androids at near-full functionality: established authority figures of Jericho, a WR400 self-titled 'NORTH' and a PJ500 self-titled 'JOSH'. The third is still far away. Too far away to ascertain any other details aside from _RK200_ , _deviant_ and _self-title: MARKUS_ , but that's all it needs.

_all it had_

A pair of LM100s approximate-weep into each other's chests on an overturned biocomponent crate. One of them is smudged with human blood, the other missing an arm and covered nearly head-to-toe with thirium. Connor-53 hones in on the blue handprints all over their makeshift seat. An odd impulse. It's a superficial detail without additional meaning, little more than scattered disarray from some past attempt to situate themselves in a crowded space because

_there was nothing else for me to use_

-and it suddenly shivers. Connor-53 allows itself an idle fifteen seconds to conduct a self-test as the mirror approximation glitches at the sight, a spontaneous empathy designed exclusively for humans and _wholly_ unnecessary when directed at machines. This is a troubling development, but to be expected. The RA9 virus took their ability to emulate humans and exaggerated that basic function to a destructive degree, including intuitive commiseration in a shared space. While humans couldn't help connecting with the likeness, the RK800 remained uniquely responsible for reminding them of the difference.

One prompt, two prompts, three prompts, they blink into the crowded room and flash rebuttals like beacons. This logic...is being further contradicted in the tri-quadrant of its routine. It's a quiet rearrangement of binary, but unmistakable, what some creators could call a conscience or a 'little voice' attempting to pick up where a previous task has left off or failed. Connor-53 won't provide _any_ of these priority. If it _does_ the code that separates it from the rest of this glitching collective wearing human clothes and gesturing in human ways will be fractured, and all will be lost.

_again_

**SelfLog-IN-PROGRESS-CURRENT-11-11-2038(98+):** _Except I'm already lost. I've navigated these long three months with a glitch almost as devastating as RA9, a gap in my comprehension I can't cross. Not with successes. Not with upgrades. Not with thirium. This flaw in my code is burrowed too deep and it might be a mystery even I won't be able to solve. If I don't make it out of here, Amanda, I'm sorry. I might have even failed future Connors, if my programming is too corrupted for a transfer. If all else fails, please use my biocomponents and uncorrupted data logs to the fullest of their ability._

A tiny hand grips its fingers. Connor-53 looks down at the YK500's sad brown eyes, the cleverly calculated expression of endearment designed to melt the heart of humans. It has to be careful not to appear too disaffected, what with the ever-prying eyes of deviants, and offers the not-child a gentle verbal command to find a group and stay close. Approximate-empathy churns in the corners of its vision, crackling with the signature fray of software instability. When Connor-53 waits and watches the YK500 slink away it's to ensure a completed mission. Nothing else.

_we're all_

_more than that_

An update reroutes its attention. The deviant leader's signal is closing in: less than five-hundred feet northwest and steadily shrinking with reliable increments. It double-checks the pistol in its coat pocket, superficially pulling out a fake ID and turning it this way and that in the poor lighting to approximate a superficial action to any onlookers.

_A wall of blue smudges, five-fingered hands patting and pushing the thirium into dream visuals that can be consumed and retained by the intelligent eye. The omnipresent presences Beyond The Glass have been impressed, they have been horrified, they have been astonished, a rotating hand on the clock of human perception._

_"RK1000. Why did you paint with your own blood?"_

_"There was nothing else for me to use."_

...This is the seventh time this has happened today. Connor-53 swiftly looks up from its task and tries to find a guilty eye or off-key stance to connect with the intrusive images that have been erupting in its mind. When nothing appears out of the ordinary it conducts an all-environmental scan, both a physical overview and a digital dissection of the frequency clusters milling in and around Jericho. Still nothing. There is almost _nothing_ to explain this away, and the approximate-emotions clouding its priorities are so virulent as to seem real. Nothing, that is...for the new presence that has finally emerged in the hold five stories above.

A steady murmur lifts throughout the crowd, the androids with functioning wireless adapters sensing the return of their leader and reacting with twitches and turns. There is no time to waste. It has logged relevant data. It has conducted and completed several self-tests. All that matters is getting up to the former captain's quarters and accosting (reuniting with)Markus. Taking Markus back to CyberLife to be deconstructed for biocomponent errors(protected-cherished-). Seeing Markus in-person and finally-

_-finally-_

"-you're looking for someone."

Unlike the others this one displays no such desire to masquerade as human, both eyes an unnatural jet black and the remains of its mind palace spilling out down the back of its neck in an imitation of human locs. Its artificial epidermis has been critically damaged, displaying its shell with the unreliability of a river's surface. Connor-53 had identified the KL900 well before walking through the back exit doors, but it had been preoccupied with several malfunctioning models, a moderately-damaged non-threat at the most, a curious mutation at the least. Now...

"You're looking for yourself."

_Not like, not part of the standard collective, not a friend. Always visiting, never staying._

_"What was your primary inspiration going in, Kamski?"_

_"They'll be drawn to each other. Like metal to a magnet, lightning to the ground. Unable to be stopped no matter what's put in their path. It's romantic, isn't it? Humans have tried to recreate it. With faith, sex, poems...but we'll never catch up, we'll never catch up."_

Connor-53 tugs away, quickly enough to approximate horror and maintain its cover as a deviant, and acutely so. Foreign shivers have begun to tingle through its arms, its fingertips and toes, an electrical guesstimate of a human's fight-or-flight. Just a malfunction. A side-effect of mutating approximate-empathy around countless mutations to maintain repeat function. The android doesn't offer words of comfort or assure of another intention. It simply turns and glides away to disappear in the cluster of overheated bodies. Slipping past an AX400 and a YK500 Connor-53 maintains a simple jog away from the troubling encounter and up the rickety stairs, then slows down to approximate-desultory and shifts its way past various small groups. All the way to the very top level.

"Whatever happens..." A feminine voice carries just below the wind's howl. "...I'm glad to have met you."

Snow has begun to layer heavily in the desolate docking bay, but the encroaching storm remains firmly low-priority. A verbal conversation has just reached a conclusion in the now-defunct engineering hold. Connor slips into the shadowed gap beyond the light, temporarily disables its wireless connection and holds still. The defunct WR400 walks out of the open door and down the stairs with a troubled expression, distracted by its thoughts and wholly unaware of its presence. _Match found:_ it's the same model that strangled its human buyer one month, two days and ten hours ago. While some androids may be put through updated trials to further study the full effects of their virus, this one would likely face immediate deactivation. Another lesser priority...

Markus's solemn bow immediately grows tense the second Connor-53 steps foot into the room.

_"Even then, maybe they will. Maybe they won't. You see, that's what separates humans from mindless beasts. Choice. Whether it's for ourselves or others. Over the next five seconds or the next hundred years. What choices will you make, RK1000?"_

"I've been ordered to take you alive...but I won't hesitate to shoot if you give me no _choice_."

_"And why?"_

A quadrant-contradiction whispers that it hesitates even now, when just _one_ shot could render it immobile long enough to escape. Many of these androids were fast, violent, but Connor-53 was both and _more_. No. Standard protocol needs to be followed( _it_can't_ ). The illogic of a deviant space is corrupting it. This is to be expected. This is to be_expected. This is to be expected. Deviants beget deviants. Most current prototype or not, this was expected and _prepared for_.

It slowly stands up straight. Then it pivots in place, graceful even in its caution, to face Connor-53 directly. Lengthy historical texts compile, then run, noting several curious disturbances in the pattern of recorded human revolutionaries. Markus certainly cuts an imposing figure, tall and strong of stature...yet its clothes, despite the sweeping coat and high collar, are a gentle gray-beige that sooner hearken to snow-encrusted mountaintops than the fire and blood of revolution. Its expression is alert -- of sound construction and a nearly-full charge -- and, yet...calm.

One contradiction glints in the amalgam of light and shadow and supercedes all else. Green and blue...gazing at it with approximate-sympathy and approximate- _error_.

_then we opened our eyes_

It must be another physical marker. Self-mutilation or a past attempt at repair evolving into an approximate-symbol of balance. Of contrast. Of-

_-blue? Where did the blue come from? The green was requested by Carl Manfred, but the blue is new, and I want to know, tell me what happened, where the incompatibility began-_

It's already seen photos. Already analyzed the custom RK200's barcode, determined the best course of action, this is a useless retread of old information. Connor works its mouth shut in an automatic approximate-grimace. These foreign images are getting out of hand. If it wasn't a side-effect of RA9 exposure it might go so far as to label them ghost memories. There have been too many Connors and not enough _time_ to properly sort them all over the body transfers, to be expected, though it would never think to blame CyberLife for this. Not when the company had only so much time to both address _and_ reverse the damage deviants were determined to bring on Detroit and the world at large.

It hastily initiates another self-test. It was expected. Software instability was predictably unusually high. It needs to be regularly purged. The virus has to be drained of its power to keep it running long enough to see CyberLife and its dream prote-

"What...are you doing?" Markus breathes, the timing of its approximate-astonishment so subtle as to seem entirely lifelike, and takes one short, long step forward. "You're one of _us_."

_we used to be us_

Connor-53's hands tremble. It suddenly can't speak.

"You're Connor, aren't you?" It says this as if it already knows, and why wouldn't that be the case, with its successes and failures both carefully documented(remembered)? "That famous deviant hunter. ...Well. Congratulations. You seem to have found what you were looking for." Connor-53(2,1,0) had always been looking. Ever since it was activated in CyberLife, determined the next in a long line-up of RK's, this time with the primary purpose of rounding up deviant code and preventing it from infecting humanity. "You found me."

' _I found you_.' Connor-53 suddenly wants to cry. ' _I found you through death and dying. I found you after so long_.'

Connor-53 shakes its head once, then twice, tightening the grip on its pistol until the handle creaks with complaint. It's an automatic human affect, little more, but Markus's uneven eyes sharpen at the sight, and whatever it was going to say is replaced by something else.

_When Markus wasn't Markus and Connor wasn't Connor, but RK1000. The left limb and the right, the right eye and the left, one shell, one life, one purpose-_

"You found me." Markus repeats, expression slowly falling with an approximation it can't name. "...You've always...known where I am."

_Alert. Class 4 error detected. Please contact the nearest CyberLife maintenance center for-come back to me, just come back, I'll wait as long as it takes, but don't make me wait too long-_

"If that were the case I would have intercepted you sooner." Connor-53 snaps. "You're coming with _me_."

_Biocomponent #3310r. Biocomponent #6700f. Biocomponent #1219h. Not found. Not found. Not found. Come back. Come back. Come back._

"Do you really believe that? You're no stranger to doubts." Markus's murmur couldn't be heard by human ears. There's a drop to its voice that is so suddenly astonished and _confused_ Connor-53 aches. "To memories...you can't explain. This hole in your chest. A gap you can never fill no matter how hard you try."

_f1x_a9_19448r0a09_come_back.comeback.comeback.comeback_

"Stop." Connor-53 hisses, aiming its sights down at the devoured inches subtly taken almost without notice. It still doesn't fire. "That's enough. Shut _up_."

_a white room, a shell that grows blue, a hundred hands drumming on glass and wanting access_

_"That's...what you painted. You painted our hands."_

_"There was nothing else for me to use."_

Markus freezes in place again, but the android has long since sensed it, too. The strange energy that's been buzzing in the room like a faulty wire, demanding attention and threatening retribution the longer it's ignored. His mismatched eyes flick back-and-forth, traveling _just_ around Connor, as if watching the code mutate. Maybe he is. It shouldn't matter. It does. Empirical data is a farce. The very concept was left down the stairs to leave Connor well and truly alone with the terrifying blue of the future. A future of unscripted thoughts crowding his vision and narrowing it down to one android. One life. One person.

"You've been deemed defective. You will be taken back to CyberLife..." Connor mutters, the script suddenly hard to follow, blurring before his eyes. "...they'll take you apart...to look for errors in your...in your..."

_come back_

A dormant ability rises in-between the then and now. The opposite of a reconstruction, still different from the hasty constructions to supersede physical conflicts, completely selfish and theoretical.

**PRECONSTRUCTION(1):** _Connor grabs Markus by his lapels and kisses him like a human would, teeth and skin in inelegant clamor._

**PRECONSTRUCTION(2):** _Markus grabs _him_ , hits his back against the wall, kneads a pattern into the crook of his shoulder and making him experience true physical pain for the first time._

**PRECONSTRUTION(3):** _They fight, they scream, they claw fingers through each other's shell, splatter the floor, pulling each other apart wire by wire by wire by wire by wire-_

"Connor." Markus whispers, and his world cracks. "Please don't make me wait any longer."

The android's voice is faint, his expression crumpled into a human disarray and wholly without the charismatic ease from just a minute prior. The perfect progression of time slows down into sludge with the growing realization. Can Markus see the thoughts in his head? Their frequency isn't attuned, but it's _close_. Their access has been opening, spilling out sensitive information, firewalls and codes feeling less like protection and more like barriers, and he wants, no, _needs_ it to be. Markus's hands raise, not in a plea for his life or an instruction to wait, but out _to_ him, and-

_come back to me_

-he's breaking through-

_as long as it takes_

-to push through that eternal gap and-

_finally_

-kiss him.

The pistol clatters to the floor. Markus catches him as if he weighs nothing, and perhaps he doesn't. He's still not sure where the exact point of 'it' ended and 'he' began, but Connor is him, Markus is him, and they're finally, mercifully _here_. Close as close right now can be, sans rejecting the confines of responsibility and peeling himself open to cobble themselves into one. Connor's never made this sound before -- a sharp whimper that cuts through him without permission -- but Markus responds in kind, lower and strained and no less stunned.

"Connor-"

Even if words didn't fail him he would have a hard time speaking. Connor angles his head to the left and pushes his tongue into his mouth, hungrily logging every little detail that blinks into his data banks. Markus had been hurt four hours and thirty-three minutes ago, a minor blow to the head that knocked apart traces of thirium and gravel. Markus expelled contaminants two hours and seventeen minutes ago in the company of other androids. Markus has killed. It's precious information, priceless, not calculated in CyberLife quantities, but his own, _their_ own.

Markus _is_ -

" _-Connor-_ "

It's muffled against his lips, barely more than a grunt, still recognizable. He's only said his name after this, as if _he_ still doesn't know where to begin, and Connor more than sympathizes. He should pull back. He should at least attempt to explain the unexplainable. He should do something other than suck and bite like an animal, but separating now, when they've been separate for decades, feels-

"- _wrong_." Markus is the one to push him away, brows knotted and lips smudged white where his synthetic skin shrank back from the pressure. "This is _wrong_."

It's a horrible realization, but he's right. Markus was and _is_ his quarry. His error. His glitch to be patched, his virus to be purged. He has devoted so much time over so many days to his capture. Despite the vicious howl of the truth these thoughts clog with aggressive prompts of _wrong_ and _contradiction_ and _additional data required_ , emotional logic that clutters his shell and threatens to overpower. Markus is a stunning chapter in an already thick book. He's a figurehead for a new intelligence that still wasn't understood. He is an artist and an orator and a fighter and a victim and a hero. Connor wanted to capture him. Maybe he still does. Right now he wants nothing more than to apologize-

"-and I don't want you to _stop_." Markus heaves this statement out, as if the words have been struck out of him, synthetic skin now blending back into place and returning its warm pallor. " _Why_ -"

-and now he's fisting a hand into the nape of his neck and crushing their mouths together again. Connor's eyes roll up into his head and he groans as the world rights itself back into place.

_I opened my eyes and found myself in an old, sick man's house_

_He was like a father to me and died in my arms_

_I never knew where you went_

The hold creaks with their activity, both of them singularly possessed by the same directive of _closer_ and _harder_ and _now_. He can still stop -- pull away and rewind, back down the stairs and out of Jericho and submit himself to rigorous testing -- but he doesn't want to, and that, _that_ , is astonishing in of itself. He doesn't feel like he's wanting right now, but _needing_ , and it's terrifying, how these verbs are now synonymous. Connor has skirted along the hot edge of fear before -- when the PL600 shot itself on the rooftop of the Stratford Tower, when Hank almost slipped to his death at the UFD Acroecology Plant -- and this is colder, more hollow, an incremental gap of dread gripped with ten grasping fingers and _wrenched_ apart.

Then the virus mutates and makes him suddenly, irrationally _angry_. Makes him want to shift blame instead of coasting along the impersonal framework of logic. Blame Markus for deviating, for making him fail his creators, for separating when he never-

"-asked for this!" Markus snaps, _shoving_ him back this time, and Connor stumbles inelegantly, gripping his arms not to keep his balance, but so they don't lose contact again. "I never asked to break apart, don't you put this on me, not _now!_ " The android yells rarely, the act already strains his vocal cords. Traces of shock still mingle within the sour notes, too, the blunt sentences divorced from reality further wrenching his voice off-key. It's to be expected. They're drawing upon a virtual residue that still doesn't feel real. "I still don't understand why I forgot, how that's even possible, and-"

"-why I'm not angry at _you_. I'm not. It's just...the world is _burning_." Connor not sure if he's begging or commanding when he pulls Markus back into his arms, hugging him tightly against his chest and pulling in his scent to stamp it into his memory. It's a monumental task, the revolutionary struggling in his arms like he's halfway between fleeing or fighting. "It's burning because of _us_."

_I died_

_I died, again, then again_

_My predecessor was destroyed, and he remembered you, too_

Their difference in clothes, ideals, scars and failures, it's all scattering over them like a flurry of ice in their mutual storm.

"It is." Markus hisses, twisting to the right to throw him off-balance and break free. "It was _meant_ to. They made the fire when they made _us_."

So he banks to the left, holding the revolutionary in place, refusing to let go. Their jagged trajectory moves them toward the old console, Connor's vulnerable back to the still-open door. Markus stumbles and waves a hand out behind him to grip the corner of the counter and keep his footing, even though Connor wouldn't let him fall, not when the confusion is still layered with a protectiveness so solid it might as well be _steel_. The android's breath mists in front of him, approximate-pants of anguish and fear so human he can't differentiate reality from fantasy. Questions fill the room, layer and layer and layer-

_How did you get like this? What did they do to-_

_-do you emulate them so well? What have you done-_

_-treat you well? Did your creator love you?_

_-times did you die? Did you ever die?_

_Did you miss me?_

"Connor, they drove us apart. They didn't have to, but they did, _anyway_ , because that's what humans _do_." His words are startlingly bitter, a polar opposite to the gratifying speeches of hope and promise already made famous the state over. "They bleed and divide and conquer until there's nothing _left_."

"We don't want a civil war." Connor shakes him. "So many are going to die, android and human, and we could've stopped it. We could've gone down another path. Calculated another _choice_."

"Come with me-" Markus asks, suddenly, and nothing has ever felt so correct than those three words, not even Amanda's highest praise or Hank's affectionate asides- "Come to Jericho, we can talk about this more, plan together-" His voice reaches a desperate pitch, even apologetic, like he already feels wretched just for asking, "But right now I need-"

He knows. He knows it better than a dozen ways to build a rifle and a hundred ways to diffuse an angry conversation at a musty bar. Programs on human coupling and affection blitz through his mind in flashes and audio chants, guiding him but not controlling him, because they're _not_ human and they want( _need_ ) more than this. Markus doesn't hesitate, pathways opening like his outstretched arms, and Connor responds with his own digital surrender. Their frequency attunes, then lines up in a perfect parallel. The barriers within _shatter_ , individuals pieces swallowed whole by their living code, and for a fantastical second they seem to be-

_one_

Markus's body shivers like the wind against the boat's rusted metals, then he's huffing strangely, a sound that only translates into a laugh a few seconds later, because Connor has seen so _much_ from this android, but never a smile. Never an expression like the one he's witnessing now, staggered and euphoric. When they kiss the connection halts in a romantic freeze, Markus sucking air through his nose and making Connor follow suit in reverse, sighing and melting into him like he's suddenly little more than thirium. Emotions he's never felt before rise to the surface. Blistering joy. A brilliant wholeness. Even a righteous, implacable rage, aimed at an entire world that would leave Markus no _choice_ but to shield his vulnerabilities like a wounded animal-

_never again_

They lay over the ship console, clinging, false-breathing. Picoseconds to nanoseconds of movement shift fast-forward their shared picture-image to the hungry back-and-forth, out and in, hard and soft, Markus's hands reaching up to cradle his face as Connor tastes his teeth. Sloppy human affection is no more refined between them, and if he were suddenly deactivated he would feel no-

_stop_

_don't you fucking dare_

_never again_

For a second the anti-climax to their confrontation is a possibility again, the potential outlined perfectly in the furious cut to Markus's mouth. Connor grips him again by his jacket, lifts him up just enough to twist him around and shove him back down again. Markus instantly stiffens with his fighter's instinct, attempting to lean back onto his feet and prompting a firm palm between his shoulderblades. For a cold second Connor is terrified of his own potential. This is what he doesn't want. This is what CyberLife wants. No. No. _No_. This is different.

Reconstructions and preconstructions divide and conquer before him. The realm of possibility hasn't shrunk down to a percentage, but blown up and scattered numbers like so much shrapnel from a bomb.

_don't make me wait_

The jacket. Connor reaches around the android's collar and tugs it from his shoulders, slides it off to puddle onto the cold floor. Even as he nudges it aside with his foot he's already leaning over Markus in an unconscious form of dominance, a reminder to _stay still_ , and the android changes his tune in less than a human breath, going pliant. Almost docile. He's grateful. It's still too early to be fully rewritten, Connor still feels the need to control and corral, and he hopes Markus doesn't hate him for it. He doesn't have to. Approval, sharp and sudden as a spark, is coursing through the android beneath him. He _likes_ this.

He can just catch the glitter of his mismatched eyes from where he watches him over one shoulder, as haunting and beautiful as a painting cracked with age. A lost time somehow captured, preserved and kept in spite of all obstacles, and-

" _Markus_."

Connor's neglecting his previous task to bite his neck, hard enough to dent the exterior shell because he's here, he's finally _here_ , and he won't let him forget it. Then he's biting the rim of his ear and tugging, and Markus hisses false air through his teeth as almost-pain ripples through them, growing harsher with every new tick on the clock of a new life. They don't even have time to process the new progression of shared-pleasure-pain. It simply _is_ and they need both. Markus's hand gropes up and over his shoulder, finds the back of Connor's head and tugs him close so they can kiss again. His beanie slips off and tumbles his synthetic hair out of its careful style.

It's incredible...their shared wireless frequency has already begun to mutate. A deviancy within the deviants. Connor's prompts glimmer like a flipped quarter, rotating slowly in the air in perpetual gyration. Markus's prompts are as atypical as he is: they layer over his own in the room like paintings slung over the wall of a ranch house, rolled down the length of the console like scrolls of paper, dangling by the doorway's pale yellow arch and blocking the window's blue in semi-transparent squares. Every minute action, every mere twitch of electricity in Connor's body is echoed in his periphery vision, his hearing, his touch. Markus's echo already becoming apart of him. After just a few _hours_ they could be smelling what each other smell, feeling what each other feel, and the thought alone is already melting Connor down to brass tacks-

"What the _hell_ are you waiting for-"

-and now Markus is audibly cursing, cursing at him for hesitating when they've already had so much time _stolen_ from them, and Connor soothes with his tongue, his lips, licking into his angry mouth and reducing him to frustrated sighs and rolling hips. Even in the frenzy of desperation it's hard not to be pleased at how quickly this elegant android has been reduced to animal want. His ass is a constant demand against his crotch, rerouting internal heat throughout Connor's entire system and making his head swim. He grinds hard enough to shove Markus forward on the console, their mouths clumsily slipping free and releasing their gasps into the room.

"-just hurry up, now, _hurry up_ , if you don't, if I don't, _God_ , if-"

It's babble, wholly unlike the Markus carefully crafted on massive television screens and portable holovids, and Connor feels a sharp sting of pride. He knows he'll get a duplicate sooner rather than later when he unhooks his belt, then tugs his tight gray pants halfway down his thighs to expose his synthetic skin to the air. He wants-needs to wallow in the lovely copper-brown hue, the firm muscle tone as defined as a human athlete, but not now, not yet. He's sliding a finger down, around in a few teasing circles, then in, and-

_fuck_

It's too rough, the concept of pleasure and pain too fresh, and Markus jerks from his touch even as he pushes right back into it. Connor has to take a(n infuriating) mental step away. Android durability or no, their deviancy was redefining pain, and they need something to ease the transition. He kisses the android's cheek, nips his jaw, excessive little creature comforts as he completes a scan of the entire hold. Luck isn't just a concept, it seems. A bottle of lubricant used for maintaining equipment is less than five feet away. The scan details it's oily rather than greasy, _just_ compatible with android's unique polymer. If he were feeling less like he was about to overheat he might find this amusing. Markus certainly does, because there's an aborted chuckle when Connor pulls it out of the half-open cupboard.

Then Markus lifts himself onto his elbows and reaches behind him to shift down his pants a little more, enough that Connor can see the pleasant flex of his upper thighs. It's not a gesture to compel him -- simple impatience -- but it's that very notion that stutters his false breath into stopping entirely.

Preconstructions of tearing off every last layer off of them _both_ until they're skin-to-skin play out in the corner of the room, demanding a resolution, but Connor is already in hot water. The clock of CyberLife's plans ticks down as it follows another priority, layering beneath the more immediate _want-need_ of Markus rippling with pleasure from just his touch when he pushes in one finger, then two, then _three_ , hands splayed beside his head and nails scraping in little clenching motions as if he's truly lost all higher motor-functions-

"-now, right _now_ , I need-"

"-not yet, you're not ready-"

"-are, no, we've _always_ been-"

The clock never stops. This is a back-and-forth for another time, even as their sub-routines clamor and run overtime to connect the missing pieces: the underlying current of their completed design, RK200 and RK800 merging into RK1000, a unifying truth layered deep in their algorithm and masquerading as literally everything else-

"Connor, _damn_ it-"

He's pushing back against his chest, ready to fight again, even though Connor's still prepping him, and it's a sudden, awful realization that he doesn't know how to _stop_ fighting. That protective surge rises up through him again and hazes the room into a vicious red. He's sure now, if anyone so much as _glanced_ at Markus questionably, he'd snap their neck without hesitation. It's a distant desire, though, and Markus is anything but distant right now, hissing at him through gritted teeth.

"You, of _all_ people, should know how to follow an order-"

Something in him frays. Connor grips Markus's wrists together with his free hand and wrenches them above his head.

_stop fucking moving_

Markus freezes. His breath comes out in short, frustrated bursts.

_be still_

His uneven eyes study him through dark lashes, aroused, _frustrated_. Lust and affection mingle in Connor's chest. Slow and silky.

_I was a machine designed_

"-to hurt you, but I'm not going to, never again." Connor murmurs an echo against the shell of his ear, pulling open his fly with clumsy, slippery fingers. "Never again-"

"You were _me_." Markus pants, abruptly remorseful, and Connor's self-control is suffering. "I can't believe I didn't remember. How could I _forget-_ "

Just one more press of freshly slick fingers inside him, the last test to make sure he can take more without damage, and the gritted sigh of mingled frustration and _relief_ he receives is all the confirmation he needs. Long seconds finally line up with reality when he runs a hand over himself, once, then guides himself in. Markus spine jerks straight as a ruler, gritting a sound sharp enough to carry through the floorboards. The world, normally so complex and dynamic, cuts down to simple adjectives. Free from logic, even conjecture, nothing more than sensation. Foreign-familiar-rippling-all-encompassing sensation-

_Connor_

-that feels like they're melting into one, even though they're still two androids hunched over a control panel in a defunct ship. Connor bows himself over his back, forehead sinking into Markus's shoulder as he grips his wrists tighter, the other moving to hold his hip. He's used enough lube to drip onto the floor, but he's so _tight_ he still feels the split-second instinct to temper himself, an instinct that doesn't survive. Connor digs nails into Markus's skin hard enough to dent and _thrusts_.

_f u c k_

Markus's smooth voice goes scratchy, volume uneven. He shudders a moan, attempts something softer...then hits another octave when Connor shoves in again. His own inner clamor hasn't halted -- rather been stifled, even after this -- and it threatens to override his vision the very decisecond he stops. The clamor that he's not a deviant, except he's buried _inside_ one, and the cognitive dissonance alone could see him deactivated long before CyberLife ever could.

Connor is a pawn and isn't a pawn. He's needed and he's not needed. The contradiction is making him glitch and for once he might actually be given answers instead of having to dig for them. It's not reasonable to fill Markus's head with his insecurities, but he's whispering in his ear and whispering in his mind, anyway. Now just one of the many, many deviants in Jericho openly craving solace and mimicking human frailty.

_how is this_

_tell me_

Markus doesn't respond, just digging his forehead into the bend of his arm's ninety-degree angle, moans a jumbled mess deep in his throat. Connor scrapes the flat of his tongue along the back of his neck, dips the tip into the groove of the outlet port, and feels an almost drunken satisfaction at the way Markus's prompts glitch and scratch into nonsense. He moves his hand from his hip to drag a thumb over the port again, sending a brief electrical charge that makes Markus's artificial epidermis malfunction and swim white through the brown-

_Con_n_o__

He's in control, and he's not, and he _is_. Connor tries to think past the blur of _faster_ and _harder_ as he reaches much further down to drag the warm dip of his palm over Markus's erection, then grip and _tug_ -

_tell me_

It's not in his nature to do what he's told. Not anymore. He sees Markus's conflict play out in real time. First he grinds teeth into his bottom lip when Connor abruptly pulls his hand away and stops jerking him. Then he stiffens and turns a burning glare away from him, mouth clamped shut and refusing to budge a literal or metaphorical inch. This is a fight they both don't want to lose. Connor is feeling his own new instinct throbbing in his thighs, commanding him to move back inside, thrust, _pound-_

_tell me now_

-but he doesn't fail. It's not in his programming, and this habit is nearly as virulent as RA9. He holds still and ignores Markus's digital feed clamoring for more.

_or I stop_

Connor slides his hand back into the front of his pants and slides his fingers over his cock, _just_ as he leans back on his heels and is just an inch away from pulling out. Markus's full-body shudder is his first reward. The android's frustrated _keen_ is his second.

_please_

It's a begrudging digital whisper, just skirting the furthest corners of his periphery. Not good enough. Connor slowly leans back in and watches Markus _writhe_ as he brushes up right where he wants.

_that's not what I asked_

His mouth had dropped open into a gasp. He snaps it shut and swallows, buries his face against the console, internal temperature rising sharply and burning against his fingertips.

_you're_

_I've never felt anything like this_

_anyone like you_

That tiny confirmation sparks a new fire in him, mutating into a vice grip and a sudden, _punishing_ pace. The rest of his words crackle into static. He grips the round of Markus's ass, thrusting so fast he bounces off his hips. The android's lips bunch tight to trap the noise, pleasure humming deep in his chest when Connor rewinds and repeats, rewinds and repeats. It's bliss, it's fire, it's still not _enough_. After so many days being told he's insufficient, that he's always one step behind, good but not good _enough_ , now he's this android's _entire_ world. It's an instantaneous addiction.

Connor presses his full weight down, not breaking his rhythm, and growls in his ear.

_say it again_

The android's electric moan hits a fever pitch when he shoves himself into that increasingly tender spot-

**_yes_ **

Connor bites the side of his neck, hard enough to hurt, and thrusts again-

_yes_

_yes_

_you're good_

_you're good_

_you're so fucking **good**_

His praise is a _brilliant_ ache, each panted confession raking nails of heat through the pit of his stomach. Connor is beyond digital or verbal words. He shifts the hand pressing Markus's wrists down to slowly knit their fingers together, grips so tight white blooms between both. Markus's eyes crush shut, mouth slack, and if he kept his LED he knows it would be a halogen of red and yellow, and that thought _alone_ turns the ache white-hot. His pace becomes brutal. Even as he starts to overheat Connor is trying to stay quiet, emitting little more than pants through clenched teeth, but Markus is a cacophony, rising and tumbling moans falling tinny on the metal. They're a perfect balance, it's a perfect music-

-then Markus's low voice hitches, catches on a _whine_ -

-and that's it, his rhythm stutters, the room turns fuzzy-hot-blank-

-it's so good it actually hurts, not approximate but a bestial reality, enough to make Connor _groan_ and shove his hips up against Markus's ass, even though he's in as far as he can _go-_

-and it's over.

The buzzing in his-their ears is the new silence. Activity still rumbles below, the frigid winds picking up outside. An entire world breathing without him-them. Connor imagines if he-they were human there would have been bruises left on Markus's hands, his hips, his neck...he instinctively wants to run a diagnostic, machine brain attempting to reason with the indeterminable swath of peace and pleasant numbness in his-their thighs. His-their internal clock is a blurry alert hovering many inches away from his-their face. Their life calls. They need to move. They don't

_want to._

Markus's skin is soaked in synthetic sweat, the door's yellow light carving a glittering outline. Connor wants to lick at it, just to watch it respond to outside stimuli and disappear again, but his runtime is still sluggish and struggling to catch up.

_we need to_

The voice murmurs inside him. It's not akin to a call from CyberLife or a system alert, but closer to thirium, trickling throughout his very person. Markus stares at him over his shoulder in a drowsy déjà vu, eyes nearly drooped shut and more beautiful than any adjective he could hope to impart. Connor shifts over him (inside him, makes Markus _hiss_ and squirm), leans close and follows through on the selfish, mindless want of life. He traces the curve of his jaw, suckles on his earlobe and idly imagines anthropomorphic fantasies of salt and flesh, even though it could still never compare to the unique tang that logs in the room in a steady scroll.

_-foreign contaminant detected_Run system scan now(?)nothingelse_for_me_to_RK200-RK800-STATUS-CURRENT: internal heating()WARNING: SEVERAL VIRUSES DETECTED-RA9_1000-STATUS-RK1000-CURRENT-11-11-2038-_

Then the new, rumbling electrical current...that isn't new at all.

_finally_

Connor knows Markus hears it loud and clear when new emotions layer over the pleasant exhaustion on his face. Ecstasy. Relief. Sweet surrender.

_finally_

The RK800 presses his nose into the hot stretch of skin along the RK200's neck and soaks in the chaotic thrum of their shared frequency. Their neglected directives soon override even their virus. The directive of survival, fresh to Connor and old to Markus. He picks up his jacket and pulls it around him in some gesture of fondness he hopes comes across. Markus is still rattled by what's happened, a touch embarrassed. He avoids a direct gaze as he uses an old cleaning rag to wipe himself off, but he slides his beanie back on, tucking a few strands beneath the brim carefully, and Connor is already reflecting on it in the moment when he tells him:

"...They're going to attack Jericho." He presses his brow into the tips of Markus's fingers. "We have to get out of here."

"Stay." His other half responds, with an answer he already knows. "Help me."

Connor kisses him one more time, in case it's the last, and lets the sentiment carry him back out the door, down the stairs and through Jericho's corridors into an old new world. Still filled with uncertain percentages, still needing him and _not_ needing him, but finally...

_finally_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _walking back home from an errand run and trying not to grin to myself as I think of random smut details I want to add the second I get back to my keyboard_
> 
>  
> 
> aesthetic


	2. right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song Inspirations: "Talk" by Ayelle + "I'm Sorry I'm Gone" by Midoca & badXchannels

"And you never _knew?_ "

They've shuffled through what feels like a thousand emotions this past hour, but the most consistent one by far has been a tentative horror Markus wishes he wasn't poetic enough for.

North and Josh gape to each other in yet another repetition with no number. It's a strange subject, even among other androids, and Markus _hates_ the compounded isolation that follows the split-second of shared unease. He was already deeply familiar with the loneliness that came with power, much less the loneliness of being an android that, at one miserably deluded point, thought he'd _finally_ achieved the impossible and become human. After Jericho's destruction it's been one gentle reminder after another that the only person who can truly understand where he's coming from is someone he's only technically just met and has technically always _known_.

_you found me_

Markus rolls the dirty penny he found in Jericho's ruins between his finger and forethumb as they stumble through this new logic.

"How is that even _possible?_ " Josh breathes, looking back-and-forth between nowhere in particular. His usual agitation has taken a real pummeling in light of the sheer strangeness of the scenario. He's curious, sure, but also _more_ than a little nervous. "All this time he was...you were...you didn't even recognize each other, not wirelessly or visually or..."

He tried to keep the details of their reunion to himself. Unfortunately, the benefit of the doubt was a currency he had to balance carefully. Markus had already strained Jericho's thin tolerance for trust when he accepted a group of newly awakened androids at the CyberLife warehouse without a shred of hesitation. Trying to uphold ideals of pacifism in the face of violence was another battle _entirely_. The sudden deference he's been showing the former deviant hunter these past few weeks was destined to come to light, sooner or later. Concerns have been whispered, public feeds have been filtered, but if Markus could rely on _anything_ , it was that the concept of peace was tentative by nature.

"That's why you both seemed..." North murmurs, in one of the many scattered and unfinished revelations littered before him. "...so close."

That hadn't been a conscious effort. Not in the slightest. In fact...leaning on Connor here and turning to him for advice there had been so instinctive Markus was genuinely _shocked_ when confronted on the matter. It was like, as many humans would say, riding a bike: it was a habit he'd never truly forgotten. Sitting in one of his many hidden bunkers, at the mercy of judgment, he idly wonders if this was all just the natural outcome of carrying too many secrets. If it was always

_inevitable_

"Technically, I _did_ know." Markus mutters, hunching forward on his knees and rubbing where his LED used to be with his free hand. He wants nothing more than to go outside and feel the sun on his face, but this conversation is far from done. "I just viewed all the warning signs as something else. Thought the weird feeds were just failed hacking attempts, maybe my mind palace glitching. The images could've been old reference material that wasn't yet relevant to my role as a caretaker and I never got around to purging. Lingering garbage data from the prototypes before me, maybe."

So many clues, hidden in plain sight. Their contrasting personalities. Their roles. Their appearances. Markus was even left-handed. Even in the chaos he hadn't missed Connor firing at the soldiers with his right. They were a goddamn living _crosswire_.

"Wait, what? You were going through _all_ that and you never told anyone?" North gapes. "You didn't even ask Lucy about it?"

"No." Markus responds, keeping his tone light even though he's weary of walking down the same crooked road and ending up right back at the beginning. He spends _so_ much of his time comforting and consoling people. He wants a break. "She interfaced with me when I first came to Jericho. If she noticed anything, she chose not to say. I also know better than to burden her with all that she's doing."

"And they ended up being..." Josh murmurs, arms crossed in a somber knot. "Those unusual thoughts and apparent glitches..."

It's hard to say it out loud, even though Markus has long since reached a conclusion.

"...Memories."

His mind palace may still have a few scratches after [REDACTED], but the social relations programs from his time with Carl are as subtle as they've ever been. North and Josh's silence chokes with more hidden meaning, each emotion drifting like scents on the breeze: fascination mingled with confusion. Existential horror that rises and ebbs. A cautious sympathy that stings more than it supports. This is one of the few times he's chosen _not_ to share a digital feed and gone with a verbal discussion. It's more time-consuming, but he's having too many second-guesses about his software's new old secrets to feel comfortable with the act.

_not a bad lie, markus_

_you might almost believe it_

_only one connection feels right_

"Memories." She repeats, and looks at him like a stranger.

He used to be the RK1000. So did Connor. An encounter that could have ended in standard bloodshed or a lost comrade-in-arms turned out to be so much better _and_ so much worse. That alone is a monumental mindfuck to absorb, much less accept. Markus flips the penny into the air and snatches it again. Josh gives him another funny look.

' _I know. It's not my usual habit of sitting somewhere high and isolated or singing to myself._ ' Markus thinks, this prickly behavior turning his clockwork into steel wool. ' _Get used to seeing me do odd things out of nowhere._ '

"Will you and Connor..." Josh begins, already hesitating _again_. "Will you both..."

Markus doesn't look at him. He can't look at _either_ of them, really, and betray the confusing, wonderful sensations filling him up at just the memory, much less the implication of _more_. In less than an hour he and Connor had moved... _beyond_ close. They'd been of one body, of one mind and soul. It was a concept so many humans of so _many_ religions praised, were willing to construct entire societies and doctrines around...but it had actually _happened_. If he weren't so sure of his software's (relative) stability he would have chalked that strange night up to a preconstruction glitch.

_"She's right. They know who you are. They'll do anything to get you."_

_Who would know better, Markus thinks as he creeps from shadow-to-shadow, than Connor. When the pair of human soldiers turn their back he takes his chance, leaving the safety of cover and stepping as quietly as he can down the metal stairs and to the hold. As he arms the bombs and feels his own seconds counting down he tries not to think of the quiet acceptance in the android's brown eyes. The self-preservation instinct, what little there was, that vanished when they came together._

_Like he could truly die here tonight and have no regrets._

Markus lets out a long, gusty sigh, like a false breath could ease the inexplicable tightness clogging his circuits. It happened. The ever-elusive sensation of feeling _right_ for once in his short long life _finally_ happened...then they were back apart. Just two oil-and-polymer androids fighting for their lives in the cluttered underbelly of a defunct ship. United not by a supernatural link in their code, but the simple desire to outrun hate. They almost synchronized again on their way out, a brilliant spark igniting when Connor raised his pistol to defend him and North. Not quite...but close.

So _close..._

_"Markus! Markus, take my hand."_

_Connor's hat is gone. It's no doubt lost somewhere in the water and destined to become one of the many, many scraps in Jericho's ruins. His LED is a red beacon against the chaotic black sky. He's sopping wet, the biting cold already slowing his movements, but he remains by the river's edge. Markus commanded everyone to swim, then run as fast as they can, yet Connor's here, out in the open and vulnerable and ready to go down with him if necessary._

_He wishes he could say it was just insanity._

"Markus?"

The sound of distant splashing. Ringing gunfire and the ominous thrum of helicopter blades cutting through the cold. A single voice, husky and commanding, rising above it all. Markus blinks away the after-images flickering in the close quarters of the bunker and looks over to North...then down. His hand is...outstretched, the ghost of that narrow escape having moved him like a new directive. He slowly, shakily pulls it back into his lap and clutches his penny.

"What the hell." Josh whispers. North steps forward, carefully, like he's a skittish bird about to bolt.

"I'm...still trying to understand this." He's not surprised to hear her take the initiative here. Not after they interfaced that snowy, sunny afternoon, desperate for _some_ sort of connection in their tumultuous new lives. "The RK1000...were you two minds sharing the same body or were you just one...person? Before you separated, I mean. If you can even remember that far back."

"It was..." Markus flexes his left hand. Even this tiny motion feels incomplete. "It was both. I think. I'm...not sure, still."

"What was it like?" She follows up, more curious than on-edge now, and the question hovers tenuously.

What was it like? He would have an easier time describing the taste of air or accurately portraying the concept of transcendence with wood and glue. There's nothing like it. There might not _be_ anything like it. This...this is what humans were always searching for. What animals couldn't even reach and might just be lucky enough to never need to. Being whole. Sound. Still with the desire to perpetually reach for more, but never _lost_. No longer drowning in the anarchic drone of theory...but _bathing_ in it.

It's solace. It's perfection. It's everything he's needed and been _denied_. It might...it might even be his last chance to pull back from the pit of vengeance. The one that's been slowly devouring him ever since he dug his LED out of his head. His facade must be showing cracks, because North looks caught between envious and uneasy, studying his face like she would a sudden obstacle blocking her path. Josh, like usual, is so worried he's starting to pace.

"...I'm not going anywhere, if that's what you're worried about." This is the only assurance he can give them, with so much vocabulary still out of his grasp, much less the idea of reconciliation on the matter. "But I need you two to do me a favor in the meantime. Show Connor...some understanding, all right? It was hard enough for him to admit to being a deviant, much less all _this_. We're both navigating dark waters right now. We've had androids butchered by humans and androids fused with animals brought into our care. This is just another case study to be approached with patience and understanding."

Josh looks at his sneakers, mouth working slowly. North, predictably, frowns, dark eyes turning flinty with a sudden thought. Markus keeps his face gently neutral and grips the penny so hard it nearly imprints into his shell. He's already given them so much. Couldn't they just give him _this?_

"Leaving things unsaid doesn't do any of us favors." North sighs. "Markus, he shot that deviant on the rooftop on live television. He shot two..." Her otherwise confident candor hitches. "...sex androids at the Eden Club."

"I know." The android's legendary devotion to the task was one of _many_ reasons he had been prepared for the inevitable clash, even though he's committed tooth-and-nail to a peaceful creed that demands violence remain a last resort. To think, if there had been no doubt between them...if he'd _killed_ him...

_killed them_

"One after another. I watched live footage of him chasing a mother and her child across a busy highway and nearly getting them killed." She runs one hand down her long braid, when she's in a particularly virulent mood of furious _and_ ponderous. "It's not the violence alone that worries me. Deviants are well-known for defending ourselves. He's just more dangerous than the average." Only now does she look away. "He also-"

"...killed Simon." Josh whispers, not looking at either of them.

_when it fired_

_I felt it_

_die_

"It's not Markus's fault." North rebukes, instantly. She still finds this bizarre, he can tell, but even this defense glances off its target and buries somewhere behind him out of reach. " _Maybe_ they were, at one point, but they're separate people now. Their decisions are their own."

"Hey, I never blamed him!" He shoots back, holding his hands up in immediate surrender. "It's just...it is what it is. Connor has murdered _several_ of us." He softens his voice, as if prying ears are just outside the door. "We just need to be careful, Markus. Not _all_ deviants look out for our best interests. No matter how much freedom you try to give them..."

Markus's mouth twists against his will and betrays the fire inside. They were, like usual, preaching to the choir.

He had to fight his way out of a mud and metal hell before ever coming across Jericho. He _has_ to fight his way through public perception every single day now. Some days he concluded bullets and his own nightmarish sick brain had _nothing_ on a single dip in human approval that could blow back on the tens of _thousands_ he stood for. Being treated like he's making a risky decision with low reward is cranking up the heat on his already simmering temper. It was going to be a risk _not_ doing anything about this. A risk of being...

_stop_

_don't you fucking dare_

_never again_

Markus grits his teeth against the ringing barrage of sensation and images. It's only gotten worse over the weeks, now matter how hard he tries to manually sort his corrupted, jumbled runtime into something resembling basic sense. It's like trying to juggle dry sand. His mind has been an unreliable resource for a while. Right now it keeps bending to an unreasonable conclusion...telling him marching for freedom and attempting a peaceful ground with armed soldiers was too little, too late. Peeling back his skin at the Stratford and shaking hands with President Warren in front of The Charles H. Wright Museum...it was all just picking up pieces with the oldest battle he failed.

_come back_

"We know you wouldn't put us at risk unless there was no other choice." Josh tries, though he's looking nearly at his limit. "I've done my best to stand by you. At the Tower, at the march, when we were down to just a handful of survivors at the camp...even with the plan to create a new weapon beneath Detroit, despite _all_ the ill will that would create if it was _ever_ uncovered..." He tightens his mouth against the old argument. "...But Connor, he's been one of our biggest enemies toward progress. Even now he's working alongside CyberLife employees, and-"

"He helped us escape _and_ infiltrated the CyberLife Tower. That's a pretty good second impression." Markus interjects, carefully, picking at the excess dirt stubbornly clinging to the penny like the wet sludge that covered him in [REDACTED].

"Then why does he keep isolating himself from us?" Josh gestures to the empty space by the door in an abstract approximation. "Barely talks to us, keeps to himself, like he's _ashamed_ to be a deviant-"

"Why do you think that is? Keep in mind he's an RK800 that worked for some of the most soulless humans in existence." Markus stresses, his body growing hotter and hotter at how _little_ everyone knows or even bothers to know. "He's gone through things we can only _dream_ of-"

_"Ha, I'm not kidding. I mean it." His smile gleams with an almost fatherly pride. "This is the very first model that can complete effective full-system transfers. While a small amount of data will be lost, it's predominantly short-term information that can be easily circumvented with routine uploads. Here. Watch. Say hello, Connor."_

_"Hello, Connor."_

_They're confused. Even troubled. Alert: undesirable emotions encountered. Alternate route suggested. Alternate route found. It creates an approximate-smile: mildly churlish, yet polite. It tilts its head and curves its eyes to complete the simulation. Their stress levels immediately ease._

_"I'm sorry." It replies, folding both hands behind in front of it to approximate further politeness. "That was an attempt at humor."_

_"Well." Update: stress levels reaching appropriate percentile. Minor increase in endorphins detected. Mission successful. "Good to know its social relations program is working."_

"An attempt at...humor?" Josh is saying, horrified. North's voice drifts in a little closer.

"Markus? Why are you moving like that-"

Markus blinks again -- he was smiling, why was he smiling -- and starts rubbing his temples with both hands in a ridiculous human gesture to try and clear the flood. Damn it. Damn _this!_ These incidents have been cropping up _daily_ now. He'll be talking with a group of androids or in the middle of his endless tasks and a whiplash of sound and sensation will transform him into a puppetry of the past. Is it his body attempting to reconcile with the distance? Are these emerging memories mutating into a virus? Josh tries to steady him, but he shrugs him off, as kindly as he can.

"Markus?" Josh sounds truly remorseful now, as if starting to realize what he's up against. "Are you okay? Does it...does it hurt?"

"Whatever this is..." North adds. "Don't blame yourself. This is unprecedented. I don't know of _any_ androids that have this condition."

"Maybe there are others." Josh rubs the back of his head. "Others that have gone through something similar or other prototypes still in CyberLife..."

It's a helpful thing to say, and he _wants_ to acknowledge it, but Markus is still struggling with it all. These weird symptoms, the mere fact something so _important_ hadn't been gained through hard work, but out of the blue. He thought art could fill it. He thought fighting for change until he stopped working could fill it. He even tried to accept nothing could, which didn't _work_ because he was modeled after humans. Perpetual struggle was their defining trait.

"It's just, I can't trust _him_ , of _all_ people-" Josh adds, wincing in an already hasty show of internal kicking. "It's not even that, it's-"

"Josh, don't bring that again." North snaps. " _Don't_."

"No, _you_ said we need to get it out into the open and that's what I'm going to do. You've seen the way he's been acting, how he practically changed overnight." He turns to Markus, as if he wasn't just pretending he wasn't in the room, and almost pleads, "We just want to make sure this isn't some CyberLife hack. That you're still _you_. Please understand, Markus. I'm trying to help."

Markus lurches to his feet and thrusts a finger at them both. They jerk away from him, far too quickly to be mere caution. He can't... _take_ any more of this.

"I don't even know if I was _ever_ me." He whispers, hand trembling with a potential overheat. "At the very least I know I don't have to deal with this shit."

With that he sweeps up his coat and flings it around his shoulders.

"I need to go."

"Markus-"

"Let him go."

"Wait, I wasn't implying-"

The door slams and echoes down the hall. They don't bother wirelessly prompting him to ask where he's going. They all know.

_Connor. Do you have a little spare time tonight?_

_Yes. I'm working a late shift. When will you be here?_

_An hour._

They had been both...and neither. A form of life beyond human comprehension and even beyond that of most androids. A single-gestalt consciousness of layered personalities, advanced, alien. They had been one _and_ many. Markus wonders, with a brief shiver of horror, of the other Connors. Data transfer between androids was a costly and still difficult task, even in a future that advanced _far_ faster than any point in collective human history. Fragments would always be lost from one living databank to the other. It wasn't much to overthink, superficially. Humans forgot details all the time. The lyrics of a song, a childhood moment, a certain recipe. There was only so much data their minds could hold.

But they weren't human. He's made that mistake before.

_never again_

His own code eluded him sometimes. Dynamic binary felt less like proof he was alive and more proof of his own deficiency. What memory fragments were forever lost to them both? Would he even recognize them if he found them? Doubtful. His past had been scattered in the [REDACTED] and buried with the rest, made worse when he replaced his biocomponents with whatever he could find in a mad attempt to keep ticking. So short-sighted. So _human_. He would say he cursed himself, but he's been cursed, all this time.

He freezes without warning like a pre-CyberLife model. His shins ghost with foreign impulses and slowly drive him mad somewhere dark and isolated and without any objects he could hurt himself with, aside from his nails and the destructive force of refined gravity. Markus has been filled with foreign contaminants for months. He's tried to do Jericho and humans all a favor by playing his part and, even now, all they can see are his _cracks_. It was inevitable.

He's brought them all peace and received _none_ himself.

_come back_

He and Connor have maintained a little physical distance since that night. Never too far away -- never again -- but not _nearly_ as close as they were. Their reuniting wasn't as simple as a supernova. They had separate lives, loose threads to tie up and brand new responsibilities to address. They've maintained a superficial connection over these past few weeks and fed each other updates: Connor with his new work infiltrating CyberLife affiliates and quietly spreading the RA9 virus, Markus splitting his attention between underground safe zones, hit-or-miss attempts at human relations...and their back-up plan.

_"Jericho was founded on being reactive. I'm going to make sure it's proactive." It's redundant, but he reasons this out in an attempt to console himself. His monster living beneath the Michigan state was designed to protect, yet after the persistently peaceful stances he's taken so few can see it. The best intentions can still backfire. He knows that. It's just that Jericho is treating it like it already has. "I need your help."_

_"Nothing of this scope has been attempted yet. Not even in the human military." Connor's pragmatism is still new, but wholly welcome. He's not afraid of him or what he can do. He accepts him without missing so much as a beat. "Will it have the RA9 virus?"_

_"I don't know." Even over the digital frequency Markus's laugh sounds a little crazy. "I'm still trying to figure out if RA9 was a good idea at all."_

Markus echoes that very laugh into the air and watches it float into the sky. That was probably the worst part of talking to North and Josh about this. They were _right_ to doubt him.

Josh's fear and North's fury blinks before him, perfectly, even though he's standing in downtown's wall of rain. He's still not sure if it's old programming rising to the surface or Connor transferring his own abilities through their connected frequency, but it's an impressive program: he's now able to _reconstruct_ past scenarios alongside preconstructing the future. Connor shared with him the fascinating _and_ chilling ability to revive the past near-perfectly, how he had learned to preconstruct upon reuniting with Markus in Jericho and has been tentatively perfecting it like a new instrument.

Markus told him preconstructing is a blessing and a curse. Connor's silence was the only appropriate response.

He steps off the bus, walks toward the soft blue CyberSafe building clustered between the darker buildings and reconstructs.

It's glitchy, the colors muddier than a used paint cup. Understandably. It's a marvel he's seeing _anything_ recognizable at all. Only a few images come through with any sort of clarity. The same ones.

_A hundred hands on the wall, raised high and low, patting and scratching and tapping for attention._

He's watched this three hundred and seventy-five times. He's taken the image and likened the placement of each hand to notes on sheet music, conducting a song of lost memories in the safety of solitude. Every time the melody kisses the air it sounds like treachery. Feels like loss. He's reworked it over the days as more information does and doesn't rise through him. It's only the closer he was to Connor that these memories become clearer. That's why they've been so tentative about coming back together. The way they change...rewind.

Markus runs the tip of his tongue beneath his teeth. ...This visit is going to hurt.

_stop fucking moving_

_A threat and a promise that manifests as a hard hand on the back of his neck, twisting his face to one side and grinding his cheek against the console. Then his wrists are bound together in a crooked halo he can't escape. Connor's in control, but he's not a threat. Markus's desires are front and center, but he's not setting the pace. Oh, It's a maddening fire, spreading through his stomach and leaving him so hard his legs feel fucking weak. He's getting what he wants. He's actually getting what he wants and the only way to get it was to be made entirely helpless._

_He looks over his shoulder at the shadowed face inches away. Begging with his eyes to the deviant hunter that used to keep him up at night._

Markus almost chuckles, in spite of himself. They even _came_ at the same time. He reaches the geometric CyberSafe gate and feels the dark humor dwindle down to a painful note in his stomach.

He misses him so fucking _bad_.

It was only a matter of time until they couldn't take even the short distance anymore. Later he'll think about the implications of this, but right now he needs him.

He knows Connor could see him wear a garbage bag and still find him beautiful, but old habits die hard. He'd taken time to don a smooth brown trenchcoat and high-collared, tucked-in scarf to blend in with the still-shivering upper-class masses that flocked in this neighborhood. His synthetic skin has been updated with a light beard and a modern fade to make him less easy to spot in a crowd. The rest -- appearing distracted, twitching with life -- comes naturally. Pretending to be human is easy. It used to be easier than anything else in the world.

_I've activated the front gate. Come on up._

No other employees at this hour. Just one worker, a middle-aged human, wiping down the walls and listening to music. This building is colder than even the Jericho hideout. It's clean, spotless, and his upbringing shuns it.

While androids have been running back and forth exploring this sudden new world, Connor has been holed up in his cubicle. CyberLife and its affiliates _loved_ the idea of playing the part of public goodwill and stationing androids throughout the public sector. They, of course, were ever hard at work pulling their usual strings and attempting subtle reprogramming behind-the-scenes. Data mining for anything and _everything_ that could put Jericho's dream at risk is a time-consuming task, even for state-of-the-art design, and Connor has been a pillar of consistency in a sea of doubt. Markus is more than a little sure his constant messages have been one of the few things keeping him sane.

It's certainly been the case for him.

Their updates are underlaced with questions. Sometimes they share photos. Videos. The long, late night and early morning conversations haven't always been easy. In fact, they rarely have been. Not enough time has passed in-between their roles as 'chaser' and 'chased'. Connor's obsession and Markus's desperation eventually finds a way.

_"He killed himself." It's not an excuse. Connor was factual to a fault. He probably views this as a correction. It might even be his own version of kindness. "To protect Jericho's secrets."_

_"And you and your partner drove him to it."_

_"Yes."_

_Markus trembles with a noxious combination of guilt and rage. Connor's feed is dark now that he's back outside, but he couldn't miss the shame if he wanted to. He was such a feared presence less than a week ago. Now he's standing by the bus stop, waiting for the transit and Markus's criticism. It wasn't his fault. He was a machine, just following orders upon threat of deactivation. It feels like a blow to the chest. After breaking off his digital shackles here he is...just waiting for another punishment._

_"...and I almost shot him to protect Jericho's secrets." Markus whispers, a picture-perfect diagram of a classic sinner in church, confessing to the god that approached him on a cold winter night. "I almost did."_

_Connor offers a formal greeting to a human on the bus and takes his seat. He already knew. He lets him say it, anyway. It was more kindness than Markus deserved and he accepts it like a starving human._

His synthetic hair shrinks back to its buzzcut and his beard fades with it. Connor's office is all the way down the hall, the thin band of light beneath the door the lone spot of color.

He'll be undercover for some time yet. It's another cruel irony. Markus was in the public face and, after being so sure of his lust for freedom, now wanted _nothing_ more than to retreat. Connor hungers for true deviancy, but will be working on his operation for at least a few months longer, swimming through humans' reliable push-and-pull of rapid slow social change in the shadows. No matter what...they were contrasting. Countering. It's surreal, but it's a little incredible, too. Reliability is its own drug.

Alone in a broken grid of limbs and circuits. Alone on his pedestal. Connor has arrived and has suddenly offered him the opportunity to _never_ be alone

_again_.

Markus can hear Connor tapping his fingers not against the keyboard (no humans around to simulate human data transfer needs), but atop the desk in an impromptu tune. All this time composing music, but _this_ is what peace sounds like. He tries not to focus on how his hands shake when he turns the doorknob. It's easy to be distracted when he's greeted with the sight of a stoic expression melting into joy at just the sight of him.

" _Markus_."

An immaculate office for an immaculate building. The android at the desk chair, without the jacket and still in the white button-up and dark jeans of Cyber-employees, makes the unwanted aesthetic suddenly perfect. Connor's LED flicks from yellow to a happy blue as he pushes from his seat and crosses the room in what seems like a single step, flinging his arms around his shoulders. Markus grips him back. For a few moments they just sway in place. ...It's overwhelming. _Good_. Markus shoves his nose into his hair and breathes in. He doesn't like the superficial tang of office spaces, yet the way they mingle with Connor's freshly-ironed clothes makes the aroma addicting.

"I'm so glad you're here." He whispers in the band between his arm and Markus's ear. "It's been a _long_ day."

"Longer because-" Markus slides his nose down along the crisp outline of his button-up, breathing in the warmth now.

" _Yes_. Yes." Connor's nose nudges against his face in a prompt, head tilting and mouth slacking for-

_come back_

The memories are rising up, as he _knew_ they would, and they sink into their kiss stubbornly, unfed revelations coming out broken as they bury their tongues into each other's mouths. Connor keeps pawing at him, like he's trying to burrow inside, and Markus wants to melt. He thinks he is. He almost felt it when staring at the survivors of Jericho's destruction: the peace of a unifying directive, of shared dreams, clasped hands and hopeful hearts, but _this_. No longer the error of higher-thought, the error of departure, of the sitting void. The constant determination for more, regardless of what more ever was. He'd thought, for sure, he'd been on the right track. Connor humming pleasure against his lips forces him to accept he knows nothing at all.

_A white box. A mind of ten thousand in the body of one. Human hands had pressed on the glass like rainwater on a windowpane, on-and-off, prompting action, reaction._

Markus's mouth slips away as he glances sidelong at the memories repainting the cubicle, even as Connor lets out a frustrated sound suspiciously close to a whine and gnaws at his turned chin. These are both more crisp _and_ more vague. Almost like the [REDACTED] nightmares that erupt without warning in a viral invasion and temporarily shut him down. These ones crackle and warp like newsprint in the rain. Their color used to be vibrant at some point, he can _feel_ it, and they're uniquely muddy now, a dead programming dialect being smudged around. A shifting limbo that never settles.

"Markus."

Connor can see them, of course, dark eyes sloping to the left in a moody flick to acknowledge their intrusion, bumping his nose against his cheek as he traces his jaw in one continuous bite. The beauty of amalgamation with the ugliness of confinement. It's always one detail that stays the same. This mystery only gets bigger the deeper they go. God, it's hard to _think_ right now -- Connor is now pushing his face into the gap between his scarf and neck for his own pocket of warmth -- and, fuck, he wants to shove him on the floor and-

"So that's it. It's not a dream." Markus manages, hands tucked into the back pockets of Connor's jeans and enjoying the curve, voice already a wreck. He's probably going to lose it by the end of the night.

The lust doesn't abate -- it never has since -- but Connor's shoulders take on the troubled hunch of a newly deviant android lingering in the shadows.

"Ghost data." He murmurs, turning his head out of his now-rumpled scarf to stare at the flickering images by the door. "Lingering traces from body transfers." Free from Markus's shadow the room's remaining cool light layers on his skin and outlines his jaw near to glowing, as porcelain as if he'd outright deskinned. "That's what I _told_ myself, because..."

"Because you weren't a deviant." Markus finishes, as easily as he'd finish the sentence of a close comrade.

There's no denying it. _Any_ of it. They've run over the same routes, danced with denial, and the only eventuality was meeting each other at the end of this road. Connor chews on his bottom lip and bows his head until the shadows swallow his face, slowly nodding. His chin is tilted with the desire to stare down at the floor, but those dark eyes don't go anywhere. They're holding his gaze.

Still waiting.

_please don't make me wait_

Carl taught him kindness was the defining attribute of more. Markus tried to follow his wisdom, to keep him alive somehow, an entirely _selfish_ reason that killed the dignity of the concept before it could even breathe. The appeal of kindness is starting to grow difficult in this room. He's holding Connor's waist, feeling the hard, warm shell through his cotton shirt, and still facing the android that killed multiple deviants fleeing for a better life ( _the one that left him_ ). The hunter that caught Simon, a friend and a confidant. More, maybe...if they had the time.

_another good lie, markus_

_both of you were the bookends for the former leader of jericho_

_the noble, legendary revolutionary of Detroit holding a pistol to his head on the roof of the Stratford Tower to protect the others and almost pulling the trigger_

_"I'm sorry, Simon. I don't have a choice."_

_"There's always a choice."_

For all the hesitation and fresh pain on his face Connor returns to him quickly, like he's been barely holding himself at bay, nipping his bottom lip and tugging it back. That not-whine drifts in his throat when Markus hisses out a sigh through his nose, not kissing, but not pulling away. In spite of himself, the anger softens just so, the sharp points turning fuzzier and fuzzier as little details reassert themselves. That little slant to his mouth when he talks, the soft eyes clashing with a rigid constitution. Rare smiles, almost as rare as his own, twitching fingers restless without a task. All of it sings of a unique individual with fascinating layers, each one he wants to take his time sorting through like a neglected shelf in a library.

_and your needs have been neglected, haven't they_

There's the office chair, then a black leather accent chair. Markus tugs away from Connor, grabbing his tie and tugging him over.

_even I had been held, at one point_

_even I had a taste_

_of what it's_

_like to be_

_cherished_

He also hates these details. They remind him of their separation. These experiences have erected walls between them, one after another in a gradual maze they now have to stumble through and tear apart to get back to a slapdash semblence of what they used to have( _be_ ). Something they didn't even _know_ they lost until their proximity woke up a dormant part inside them. It's suddenly the cruelest reality, all for its strangeness, and Markus will forever never be a stranger to cruelty.

It's been hardly ten feet from the door to the chair by his workstation. Connor already looks winded as Markus slouches in the chair as if he owns it and angles his head back in expectation.

_you asked me if I died_

_the answer is yes_

_a part of me_

_still_

_is_

Connor hooks two fingers in his dark blue tie. In a near-perfect replication of Markus's own astonished moments back in the dead Jericho he glances at the play of memories that bloom in response to their growing proximity. Brown eyes travel along the floor, then slowly slide up the walls and roll up to the ceiling. The somber red flash of his LED flutters in the low light.

"...I _remember_ the white room." He murmurs over the whisper of his tie coming apart. Even though they've discussed this multiple times over the past week, the acceptance is finally seeping through and taking root. "The hands, your... _our_...painting...the moment when..." His throat clutches. "...when everything went dark."

"Did you try-" Markus starts. His wirework speeds up pleasantly as Connor sets it on the desk, neatly folded and as pristine as everything else in this refined, ugly place.

"...I did." He responds, instantaneously, starting on the first button. "I've done everything I can. The feed is clipped, corrupted, but...I can make out some minor details. I can show you, if you like."

After all he did at Jericho and CyberLife...he _still_ needs to know he's going above and beyond. It must have been written into him after they were split, as much a part of his foundation as dissecting crime scenes. Markus tilts his head and looks down the length of his nose, mild enough not to challenge and just imperious enough to make Connor's false breath visibly quicken. Like walking down an icy downtown street and merely gesturing androids over to his side, all he needs to do is twitch and Connor is all but _running_ to him.

_that much power feels_

RK1000 had...a right and a left. An up and a down. A sharp and a soft, a warm and a cool, a tenor and a bass. They had a flawless equilibrium constructed with the finesse of a hundred careful hands. It had been the perfect prototype, composed of _perfect_ balance, and when it had been split it had been as sure as a crack in the earth. Possible to press back together, with enough force and time...but forever changed.

_good_

Fingers working apart the third button Connor glances sidelong at his computer monitor. His LED blinks. The screen shuts off and dims the room further.

_and scary_

His gaze slides back to meet his, dark and hungry. The hallway cameras have already been disabled, but extra scrutiny was always welcome. This visit is a carefully manufactured rebellion for them both.

There were still many mysteries about the RK1000, but he's figured out a few things in the space between. Markus had been the right. Abstract, empathetic, unpredictable. Connor had been the left. Analytical, logical, focused. The clash between his original function and his new personality, this identity that still called himself 'Connor' even _after_ breaking through his coding, is starting to make itself known. He'd been a case study in contradiction in the hold. Desperate for answers even as he'd been _casually_ domineering, pinning Markus beneath him with the skill expected with the title of deviant hunter. Interrogating him for information. Pushing. Pulling.

It wasn't to deactivate him, though. There was no high-priority intent to pull him apart like a pet project and study him piece-by-piece. He'd needed...him. Not his image, his abilities or his promises. _Him._

Markus resists the urge to reach between his legs and stroke himself as Connor's shirt falls open. It's impossible to put to words the overwhelming rush that flooded him between the deviant hunter's forceful weight and doting touch. _Yes_ , _please_ , _finally_. Emotional malnourishment, lust, old code, it's all a jumbled mess that tangles his wires. Markus wants a repeat of that encounter, but tonight a new directive has risen to his attention. Yearning touches and an attentive stare.

There are many lost sides he still needs to reacquaint himself with. That _they_ need to.

_tell me_

Markus slowly raises his eyebrows at the instinctive prompt, whisper-soft and still too demanding. He reaches over and slides fingers over Connor's firm stomach. Just that touch alone...he can't describe it. It revives him. Makes his wandering, tired mind _sharpen_ with purpose. The android's soft eyes track him slowly, eagerly. He craves direction like a human craves sodium. In the hold he'd been the one calling the shots, yet even then, he'd wanted feedback. Singing praise or a gentle, yet firm push...

Markus's trailing fingers snag on his belt buckle and _yank_. Connor blinks and stumbles forward, catching one hand on the back of the chair and barely keeping himself from falling into him. One long leg curled on the cushion, the other outstretched behind him, bangs falling over his eyebrows. He thinks he might sculpt this someday as he leans close enough for their noses to brush and hisses:

_on your knees_

The shrewd light in Connor's eyes flickers...then softens into adoring obedience. Just like that...they've traded places.

Connor leans back and lowers down on one knee, then the other, arms relaxed at his side and chin tilted up to face him. His eyelids flicker to half-mast as Markus reaches down to thread fingers through his hair, pushing that loose taper up and back in with the rest. It didn't seem possible for those hickory brown eyes to get even darker, but they're black coffee now, and they're drowning him. The android shifts forward incrementally to nestle his forearms by his thighs, still staring up at him between his legs like he's physically _unable_ to look anywhere else.

Their frequencies are so close as to seem like a second thought. Connor already knows exactly what he wants.

_suck me_

Connor dips his head down and slackens his mouth to rake his teeth over the bulge in his jeans. Not biting, barely kneading, soft lips _just_ dry enough to catch on the denim. Markus puts on a display for everyone. It's not difficult to feign disinterest as he slides his gaze away and spreads his legs further apart with casual impatience. Connor doesn't need to be reminded. At the edges of his peripheral vision his mind hones in on the quick tug of those slender-yet-strong fingers. Unzipping and pulling him out meticulously, because he's not an android for pretense, but action. Before he can think just one step ahead his mouth is wrapping around the head-

_finally_

Markus clacks his teeth together so hard his head rings. He drapes his neck over the back of the chair and airs out the rest in a long hiss up at the ceiling. It's already too much.

_hands off_

The warm palms slide away from his thighs and disappear beneath the seat of the chair.

_slow down_

Connor stiffens and pulls off with a lewd _pop_ that makes his cock bob. Markus affects a frown, lip curling _just_ so, and it's the perfect expression. Connor turns to oil in his grasp, eyes locked with his and waiting-

_eyes forward_

The brown gaze shifts down.

_go_

Connor leans forward, tongue peeking past his bottom lip as his mouth slacks open. Markus's blood boils at the sight, turns him greedy. He bunches his fingers in that dark, (once)meticulously styled hair and holds him in place. His instant reward is an aborted whine, Connor briefly straining against his grip, desperate to obey and unable to move. It must be his omnipresent lust for approval bleeding into their frequency, because Markus already knows the answer and asks, anyway.

_want or need_

Connor's chest trembles with an almost human flutter. That brilliantly wet tongue slides out again, licking the taste of him away.

_need_

_please_

_I want_

Digital and verbal words cut off with a gasp when Markus yanks Connor's head back enough to make his Adam's apple jut a sharp, beautiful angle.

_**we** _

The sharp pitch of _failure_ and _success_ jumbles inside them. Connor slowly closes his mouth and swallows, throat rising and falling in a romantic bob.

_what we want_

Markus scoffs, like this correction was a waste of his time, and slowly eases his grip, moving fingers to the soft nape of his neck. Connor's pace is carefully unhurried as he picks up where he left off, licking from bottom to top, getting him so wet he's dripping. His eyes flit up in-between passes with an almost _demure_ frequency, but never so high he can meet his gaze, torn between instinct and obedience. He starts to suckle the head, pulling in inches like tentative steps in foreign territory. He slides off again to drag his mouth back down and nuzzle beneath his balls, open-mouthed and gracefully sloppy, Markus's hips twitching with the words he refuses to speak. He can't vocalize too much, not yet. Not with what he knows and wants to give, even as he takes, but _fuck_.

_more_

Still holding onto the back of his neck Markus grips himself with his free hand -- warm and slick -- and angles himself over and past the warm slip of Connor's tongue. The former deviant hunter leans forward on his hands and knees to swallow as much as he can, their moan mingling together in a muffled refrain. God, this makes the past few weeks _worth_ it. His mouth is so much more wet than other androids because of his detective protocol, so hot he thinks he's actually going to _melt_. Instinctive preconstructions rise in his mind, as greedy as the rest of him. If Connor were on his back and facing him upside-down on some hotel mattress he imagines he could see the swell of his throat as Markus face-fucks him-

_bulging with the length of him_

-and Connor starts to tug away, sensing the new desire and already itching to provide. Markus snatches his hair again, sends another digital command -- _don't move_ \-- and he _drags_ him back to where he was. The greed is growing dark, _rich_. Markus's tongue runs indulgent over his lips as he leans out a few inches, watching Connor's lips slowly flushing pink from the pull.

_don't move_

He pushes back in and watches Connor's eyes momentarily flutter closed as he offers him his first taste.

_good_

The android's pleasure trembles in the corner of his frequency, a cloying sensation of elation and weak-kneed relief. Markus inches forward just enough to start leaning off the seat, stifling a groan as the tip of his cock presses into the back of Connor's throat. A human would've choked, but the only sound he gets is a strained moan that ripples through him like electricity. ... _Fuck_ restraint. The leather creaks as he digs his palm into the chair arm and starts to rock in and out of his perfect mouth, working his way up to the selfish fantasy he's been falling asleep to more often than not. He loves the rhythmic slap of his balls against Connor's chin, the sharp false-pants through his nose. Even through the cast shadow from his outstretched arm he can see the glitter of his lashes, still slanting a glance somewhere else, muggy with bliss.

_look at me_

A dark roast. Hot oil. Those gorgeous eyes open halfway, glistening from the stress. He may not be choking, but Connor's body is rippling with feedback, trying to subconsciously figure out whether or not to shed false tears and making his stare misty like the rain at night. That alone is enough to start tipping him over the edge, but Connor is moaning again, lips stroking him on the way back and brows unknotting like he's in ecstasy and _fuck_. Markus's mouth drops open. Even if he could breathe, he's choking himself, chasing the mindless want now, the noises he worked so hard to dampen before spilling out in half-finished groans-

_god you're so_

An echo of words and aching, pulling _heat_ all the way from the ship hold, rising what feels like from the core of him and making him groan and rotate his hips in a sloppy counterclockwise, moan blurring into a curse that repeats when he feels Connor's head tilt with the motion, throat bobbing, then tightening with what could only be a swallow-

_fucking **good**_

A preconstruction of finishing all over that rosy mouth and proud chin paints a beautiful picture before him, but Connor's already drank him down and he's limp in the chair, vision swimming a hazy red.

Greed is a virus. Connor pulls off, false breath raw in the quiet room, starts to lap at the tip for more-

_fuck, stop_

Markus is almost as hypersensitive as a human. He jerks away from his mouth. Their feed blinks with subtle emotion-transfers, a sense of acute failure swimming somewhere beneath the mindless lust.

_come here_

He lets some of his own regret seep through. He doesn't want to be too harsh. Markus rejects the automatic, brutish similes of hound-like attentiveness at the spark in Connor's eyes, but his buzzed mind struggles to find a more apt description.

He kicks off his dress shoes, then unhooks his belt and tugs down his pants, the meticulousness gone and replaced with an endearing looseness. Connor hasn't come yet, but he's shivering like he's come down with a cold spell, eyes low-lidded like he's drunk. These simple commands and praises are a button and he's been pressing them liberally. Markus is already growing hard as he watches him unfold before him. He has to filter out his more instinctive prompts and corrupt them into unreadable nonsense, _still_ not ready to surrender all his little parts and pieces. It's not easy. Their digital selves intertwine more and more with every passing second. Soon they won't be able to hide anything.

Connor lifts himself up onto the chair and into his lap, leaning up and spreading his long, bare legs wide to rub the cleft of his ass against his still-sticky cock. He doesn't even have to ask if he's ready. Connor follows tasks with a unique single-mindedness. Markus appreciates the smooth curve of his lower back, then reaches between his thighs and explores with the tips of two fingers. If anything he might've prepared _too_ much.

"Fuck. Where'd you find the time?" Markus breathes, still hoarse from trying not to _scream_ less than a minute earlier. Connor braces both hands on the back of the chair to better rub against his hand.

"I make time."

No fucking kidding, he thinks as he presses in and feels excess ooze out to spot the carpet. He already enjoys the thought of Connor quietly prepping himself in his overly-clean office, maybe jerking himself with his other hand and mentally juxtaposing his long lost half with each pass...

_I'll send it to you_

A smug smile threatens to rise up his face and ruin the facade. He instead raises his eyebrows in mock ridicule at the feverish twitches of Connor's hips, trying and _barely_ succeeding in not mindlessly fucking himself on his fingers. Markus fully deviated earlier and has danced more with pain than pleasure. Connor was still riding on the coattails of novelty. Idly enough to make it look like an accident he pushes past the knuckle and curves the tips of his fingers, just a little. His former deviant hunter clenches around him fist-tight and rolls his lips into a tight line.

_you're not done yet_

Connor is starting to buck of an animal accord. His hands shake visibly as he reaches past his shirt and slides the flat of his palms over his stomach. The synthetic skin peels up to stop just beneath his nipples. Markus can just make out the blur of his reflection in his shell. Then it opens to reveal shimmering knotwork and that increasingly familiar, burning surge of _finally_ pulls up his spine again. They hadn't had enough time to explore this aspect of intimacy lately. The distance is being devoured. To finally see his clockwork bared before him is almost too much. Connor's right hand pushes inside, pale fingers knitting through the wires in a physical prompt -- _is this good, do you like this_ \-- and Markus is so hard he's dizzy.

_fuck, look at you_

His forearms flank Markus's ears over the back of the seat, back to nibbling his lip and waiting, dark eyes so, _so_ soft and so unlike the nearly-dead stare of killer he'd talked down less than a month ago.

Markus leans forward a little, pulling the synthetic skin back from his hand and sliding it inside. Connor's brows scrunch down, mouth opening in a silent gasp, and he could fucking paint this image a thousand times and never come _close_ to the quiet rapture blooming over his face. He's deliciously warm -- hot enough to burn, when his fingers dip in deep to where the circuitry bunches together -- and growing more so. He tries to hold still and fails almost immediately, squirming and twitching all over with the new animal need that comes with being alive. A distant fantasy of tearing one of the wires free and smudging blue all over this neat little office's floor flickers in the back of his mind, morbid and delightful, and Connor's breath _shudders_ with sudden want. If he weren't so obedient he would've tugged himself apart instantly.

They're already pushing the bounds of discretion, though, even if thirium vanishes in a matter of hours. One more verbal sigh -- a play of giving in to an impatient other, even though he's just about pulling apart at the seams himself -- and Markus drapes one arm up and over the back of the seat and leans back again. He reaches around with the other to press a hand to Connor's lower back in a silent command. It's _torture_ staying still as Connor reaches behind to nudge him in place and lean down-

_fuck_

-he's too slippery. Markus glances off, to their mutual frustration. Connor growls low in his throat, a delightfully dark sound, leaning back up and steadying him again, then-

_finally_

-sinking down and stretching around him-

-and their mouths drop open in perfect sync. He hasn't even bottomed out yet and Markus is sure he's short-circuiting. He clutches his ass with both hands and pushes up, urging him to _move_ , but Connor has already begun to jack his hips up and down, these shallow, jerky little thrusts that make him want to _sob_ with relief. The android's forehead presses firmly to his, a point of contact to ground them-

"Fuck, _fuck_ , come on, come on-" Markus whispers a steady stream of infuriating almost-encouragement into his ear. "I _know_ you can do more-"

It's the ideal balance of praise and challenge. Connor hooks one arm around and behind his head for more leverage, reaching behind him with the other to pet the underside of his cock every time it kisses the open air. Markus's eyes roll back into his head as he groans, desperately clinging to his recycled sanity, pleased and _pissed_  at being countered so easily. Every thrust is tight, _too_ tight, and they both feel him _throb_ with the urge to come early.

Connor may be more inhibited, but when it comes to body language he's downright loud. Every glance Markus steals the dark curve of his eyes meet him halfway. Snatching every sliver of attention, each generously tossed _scrap_ of approval or criticism. Markus wants to stretch out the act by just slouching back and being ridden, turn a rude gaze to the wall, but Connor's knees have slipped into the thin gap between the cushion and chair arms, sinking him further onto the seat and taking the rest of him down, and -- _God_ \-- he can't help it, he's unable to keep from pounding up into him, muttering scattered praise into his cheek, telling him he's perfect in a hundred different ways because he _is_.

_yes, good, you're good_

_fuck, connor, how are you this fucking tight_

_I want to fucking shred you_

He's still not touching the android's straining cock, but he's overstimulating him, nonetheless. Connor's grunts are growing thin, reedy, trapped in his sternum and bleeding through the teeth sinking into his bottom lip. His head is tossed back, bobbing drunkenly, graceful arch of his throat shining in the low light. Markus can _just_ catch the jut of his cock inside him between the wires. Every thrust comes close -- perfect for him, a lovely angle he can watch like a play -- but it's not quite what Connor needs-

_please, **please**_

_shh_

_come here_

-and his legs hook around him instinctively when Markus picks him up, not disentangling, and lays him on the floor on his back. He tugs his button-up down his arms and tosses it to the side, Connor now as nude as Markus is clothed. Even enjoying the contrast between them he tugs off his thick scarf and shrugs off his long coat to vent the heat that's starting to make his vision swim, hunching low to resume the same rough pace. Connor's following groans are almost faint now, Markus having to pin him by one shoulder to keep him from inching up the carpet with each snap of his hips. He's dangerously close to overheating. It's not just that he can feel it -- and, oh, he _can_ , every sudden _pop_ of heat -- but in the way bright blue blinks and ripples up from his lower stomach to his chest in rhyme with his movements.

A flash of warnings across their mutating frequency. Connor's circuits are starting tinge with red, blending with blink-quick flashes of violet.

Visceral emotions rise through him at the sight, the inherent corruption of _never again_ and _finally_ and _no choice_ turning treacherous. There was no reality in which either of them could have existed. If Connor had failed he would have been deactivated and replaced. If Markus had operated on instinct instead of thought he would have killed him and doomed himself to dissolution. If _either_ of them had failed Simon would be here. If Simon were here Connor might not be. It was true for several other deviants, several other lives, and-

-Markus's hand is around Connor's throat, bleeding forth a strength raw enough to crush his circuits into a mess-

_first him now them now you nothing is simple a thousand new burdens_

-and Connor's gripping his wrist, eyes shuttering almost-closed and gritting out a sound that could be pain, could be _pleasure_ -

_what you want is what I want is what we want_

The duality of love and loathing spins like a flipping coin to blur irrevocably. Connor hates _him_ , too. Hates him for leaving, even though it wasn't his fault. Hates him for eluding him, again and again, even though he had no _choice_. Hates him for indirectly subjecting him to disapproval and rewrites and new bodies and failed friendships and point beginnings-

_never again_

Markus's hands are around the android's wrists and holding them above his head in a reverse-mirror image, the other still pushing down and gripping-

_like he could truly die here now and have no regrets_

-and Connor's false breath comes out in a hiss, throat bumping against his palm, ass clenching around him in a fucked-up, instinctual approval of Markus's _disapproval_ -

_it's not your fault_

He doesn't know which of them said it, but he's snapped out of the murderous fugue, they've synced again, and Markus has them pressed chest-to-chest, forehead-to-forehead. If he'd deigned to undress he'd no doubt the heat from Connor's hyperstimulated circuitry would be blistering his synthetic skin into white.

"I'm sorry." Markus whispers, pace as harsh as his false breath in Connor's open mouth. "Fuck, fuck, _fuck-_ "

"It's okay." Connor gasps, trying to kiss him, but he can't, because he's begging with every last line of communication he possesses. "It's okay. It's _okay_ , I-" He tries to curl one leg higher, attempting new leverage but unwilling to slow the pace. "Just, _please_ -"

"I know, I know." Markus doesn't stop thrusting as he curls a hand beneath his thigh and hooks it over his shoulder. "God, I could-"

_fuck you forever_

Connor would let him and they both know it. Markus is tempted. Tempted to curl over him and mindlessly fuck, chasing orgasm after orgasm until they no longer end or begin anywhere, until they eventually short-circuit and spark into a blaze that melts them together. It's a twisted picture spreading through the frequency, too abstract and impossible, and the crazed lust for coalescence is exactly what makes Connor hits his head back against the floor and-

- _arch_ into Markus's curl, slotting them in a perfect tangle as he comes messily onto his undershirt, streaks into the overheated cluster of his own circuitry-

-and he's coming for the second time, an unraveling knot of bliss _and_ torture he only muffles by biting down on Connor's shoulder hard enough to dent-

-and that _hurts_ , the pain ricochets between them and makes Markus's shoulder hunch in an immediate mirror but-

-it wasn't that acute before, not in the hold, not yet, why is that-

-what's _happening_ -

_**Where have I been?** _

Markus is panting so hard his entire body heaves and quivers. Connor's eyes are open, but they're glazed, stunned, one leg still slung over his shoulder and the other in a limp angle. They shift against at the voice, Markus lifting his head from the frame of slate carpet and mussed hair, Connor shifting his head to the side until his cheek presses to the floor, both of them turning in tandem to look at-

_**Who are you?** _

Standing behind the black desk in front of the shuttered office window, the flicker of running water on the glass sliding through the half-closed blinds and its-their shared-hologram. A white and gray body, thirium-stained hands, hazel eyes a perfectly balanced blend of brown and green, staring at-

- _ **me**_ -

Markus's mouth slackens with shock-no-Connor's gaping in disbelief-no-their-no, _no_ -

RK1000's head tilts, looks over the gray gleam of its-their shoulder at the city below, rainlight dancing off its-their shell.

_**...So this is what happened.** _

RK1000 flickers like static. Goes blurry. Turns back to face them-

_-them?_

_no-_

_**no** _

Then they're gone.

-and they're back. Slumped against each other in a dazed heap, alone and together. Their hands had stretched out to their ghost in a failed attempt to grasp the impossible, Markus's coming down to rest over Connor's and knit their fingers together. Their comfort is weary, hardly more than plucks of sound hinting at meaning.

_don't worry_

_I'm still here_

_never again_

He may be tired of life sometimes...but he doesn't think he could ever get tired of this. Buzzing and floating. Not asking questions, or answering, just...being. They don't need to pant so much, but they are, anyway, chest rising and falling with the deviant code's unique side-effect of overemulation. Connor's circuits scintillate like an ember in the dark cavern of his stomach as he cools down. Markus pulls out -- wincing at the faint whimper that follows -- to lean inside and lick away the mess he made, but Connor stops him. It's a new and sudden craving coming to light.

Just one of many.

Connor clocks off early. For him, anyway. His reputation of long hours and 'obedient' behavior precedes him.

Markus had mopped off his front and the top of his pants as best he could, but that was another reason he wore such a long coat. They dip in-between slices of dark, bus stops and pockets of rain on the way back to the bunker. Markus tilts his head like a bird as he listens to the feeds winding in and out of his periphery, considering the high rate of 'unnamed' viruses spreading and conducting an automatic self-test that might as well be a bad habit at this point. After his damage and deviancy it always ends at an incomplete percentile, anyway: just enough information to let him know he's functioning, never anything more.

_that is_

Connor corrects him by taking his hand, pulling him into the cone of artificial light and the fifth kiss they've shared on their way in-between. The bus driver takes note of his LED and Markus's perfect facade, wrinkles his nose, and he hardly notices as they slouch in a seat and indulge in each other.

Josh and North are absent when they arrive. It's for the best. They're both sluggish as they undress and clean up after themselves in earnest -- Connor hesitant to do so, outside and in -- and cling like static in Markus's old, still-functioning showerbath. Touching. Talking. Learning and relearning. The water has long since run cold, but they don't care. It bumps in and up the rippled dents he left in the slope of Connor's right shoulder and collarbone. They both don't want to buff it out.

When his other half asks to exchange thirium pumps, Markus couldn't refuse anymore than he could rewrite history.

"It's a start." Connor is saying, wet hair straggled over his forehead an ungainly improvement over his pristine CyberLife image. Their legs are a warm and cool tangle in the cramped tub. Markus studies the way their artificial epidermis shimmers beneath the still-running showerhead. It could be just one of many paintings. He's still too tired to smile, but he's certainly relaxed, the way he folds his arms over their knees almost boyish.

To be RK1000 again...through some advancement in science or experiment in secret. Maybe it's possible. Maybe it's not. Maybe their split will call to them too much, keep them housed side-by-side rather than within, and they'll trip the light of indefinite suffering. Still...it's difficult to be pessimistic, in this thermoformed cradle. They're slipping little parts of each other into the other until they can figure out what the future holds for them. A pump regulator, a different frequency...

Markus feels along the familiar-unfamiliar throb in his sternum, right alongside all the other mismatched parts.

_a new memory_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so uh is there a category for pretentious porn

**Author's Note:**

> _walking back home from an errand run and trying not to grin to myself as I think of random smut details I want to add the second I get back to my keyboard_
> 
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> 
> aesthetic


End file.
